Reducing Special Educator Burnout with Elizabeth Orme

James Berges 00:01 
Special education teachers are working 60 to 70 hours a week, drowning in paperwork and burning out at alarming rates. 

Mai Ling Chan 00:08 
Yeah, and it's a crisis, James, that's really affecting not just educators, but millions of students who are depending on our teachers. And you know, I love technology, you love technology. What if technology could really transform this landscape? 

Elizabeth Orme 00:26 
I kind of thought, well, maybe the burnout feeling will go away, and it didn't. It just shifted, right? Instead of feeling like I didn't have enough time for my students, I started feeling like I didn't have enough time for my teachers. 

Elizabeth Orme 00:37 
And I'll never forget it was one IEP meeting where I was telling a family for the third time that they would have a new case manager. And that case manager that was leaving came up to me the day before and said, I don't want to leave, but I feel like I have to. 

Elizabeth Orme 00:50 
And that was really my tipping point. 

Mai Ling Chan 00:53 
Welcome to the Exceptional Leaders Podcast. I'm Mai Ling Chan, and together with James Berges, we're getting you top tips and resources for building and scaling your disability -focused offerings straight from the forefront of disability advocacy and leadership. 

Mai Ling Chan 01:09 
So today we're diving into a story about innovation, and it's really reshaping special education as we know it. 

James Berges 01:15 
Our guest is Elizabeth Orme, founder and CEO of Creatively Focused. She's a former special education teacher and director who's now revolutionizing the field through her cutting edge platform and community for special educators and everyone on the team. 

Mai Ling Chan 01:30 
I love this. You know I love tech for Ed, EdTech. So Elizabeth's journey is from the classroom as a teacher, like you said, to a tech entrepreneur, and it's so inspiring. Her company is called Creatively Focused, and she's developed Access 3 platform, which is literally streamlining administrative tasks and fostering collaboration in special education. 

James Berges 01:51 
Yeah. And it's something I wish I had even as a speech language pathologist. I mean, I think her target consumer are the sped directors and special educators themselves. But as you know, mailing, we've both worked as SLPs. 

James Berges 02:04 
It's very cross functional, you're working together on these reports and these individualized education plans. And you have these meetings with, with parents and students and everyone's paperwork has to be complete and accurate. 

James Berges 02:18 
And I remember just starting that was the most overwhelming part, you know, I went to grad school for the clinical aspects and how to run lessons. But there's so many laws you got to keep track of. And so Elizabeth's company really helps streamline that. 

James Berges 02:32 
So you're not guessing, what do I have to do next? Or like, what paperwork am I doing next? You know, we just we just use general project management tools like Asana and cobbled them together, which was not ideal. 

James Berges 02:45 
But now fast forward to how many I think she's been around for not very long, only a few years. And the impact is impressive. Creatively focused now serves over 100 schools and recently secured $3 million in seed funding. 

Mai Ling Chan 03:01 
Yeah. That's amazing. If we have any educators here, you really can take your expertise and skills way beyond the classroom. In this episode with Elizabeth, you're going to hear her talk about her transformations, her frustrations as a SPED teacher, and how she looked into an innovative solution, the unexpected advantages of viewing disability through an entrepreneurial lens. 

Mai Ling Chan 03:23 
We actually focus on that a lot on this show. How can technology actually address burnout and high turnover in special education, which is huge? Fostering connection and expertise among educators, which is so amazing. 

Mai Ling Chan 03:36 
James, I love what she shares about the community because really we feel like we work in silos and then overall her vision for the future of special education support. 

James Berges 03:46 
Yep, that community so you don't feel like you're on an island, although going to an island used to be my form of treating burnout when I was in the schools. I was feeling pretty burnt out, hence why I'm not practicing so clinically anymore, but those summer vacations were the best. 

James Berges 04:04 
Recently, I'm working now full -time in a corporate marketing job for a mental health company, so I still enjoy that, actually helping automate some paperwork so similar to what Elizabeth does. But I recently went to Yosemite, and that reminded me of just the value of tech can streamline things, but sometimes the best thing to cure burnout is to step away from a computer, run from your desk as far away as you can, 

James Berges 04:30 
go into the forest, reconvene with nature, and we were floating down rivers, we were hiking, getting into our body out of our head, so I love that. And I know you have some big trips coming up too, mainly. 

Mai Ling Chan 04:44 
Yes, I'm so excited that I will be leaving soon. This is August, we're recording this, and I will be going to India first, where I will be working with Exceptional Learning India on this amazing tablet that they have created, and it's really to help language support and language rehabilitation. 

Mai Ling Chan 05:01 
It's definitely focused in the Asian culture and Asian languages, so it can translate into all of these different languages, Chinese, Arabic, Filipino, you name it. That's exciting. Then back to back, I go from there to Dubai, where I'm so honored I'll be presenting with Dr. 

Mai Ling Chan 05:18 
Lily Chang, who is the founder of the ASHA API Caucus, and also chairman of the Emirates Speech Language Pathology Associates, trying to get this all together, Society, Convergence 2024, which is their first one, James, that they were having in Dubai, and so she and I will be presenting together on the book. 

James Berges 05:38 
That's amazing. You're on an international book tour here. Yes. I knew that AI is making it easier to translate books or other materials into different languages and that's so important for accessibility and spreading the word all around, but that's so cool to go in person. 

James Berges 05:55 
I'm jealous. I want to go to Dubai. I've never been there. 

Mai Ling Chan 05:58 
Yeah, I'll put you in my suitcase. You're going to be a little busy though or a bit crowded because I have a couple of friends that are going to be in there too. 

James Berges 06:03 
All right, we'll find another carry -on, right? Yes. And speaking of spreading the word, we always say this every episode, but it really does make a difference. We'd love to hear from you to leave a review on your favorite podcast player that you're listening to. 

James Berges 06:17 
It only takes a second and helps us know how you're enjoying the episode. So whether you're an educator, an entrepreneur, or simply someone passionate about improving education for all students, this conversation with Elizabeth Orm will open your eyes to transformative power of tech and special education. 

Mai Ling Chan 06:36 
All right. 

James Berges 06:41 
Today, I'm joined by Elizabeth Orm, founder and CEO of Creatively Focused. It's revolutionizing special education support. She's a special education teacher turned director herself, and then she launched this innovative ed tech company in 2019 to address burnout and high turnover in the field through the Access 3 platform, Creatively Focused streamlines administrative tasks and fosters collaboration, 

James Berges 07:04 
enhancing outcomes for both educators and students with special needs. It's a much needed resource that I wish maybe was available when I was a speech pathologist back in 2020. And under Elizabeth's leadership, the company now serves over a hundred schools and recently secured $3 million in seed funding, accelerating its glorious mission to transform special education support. 

James Berges 07:28 
So I'm excited to dive into all of these, but first, I just want to say welcome, Elizabeth, thank you for joining us on Exceptional Leaders. 

Elizabeth Orme 07:35 
Thanks so much for having me. 

James Berges 07:36 
Yeah, so let's dive in to you've had quite the journey as I mentioned up top from special education and I love these homegrown movements. Tell me a little bit about that transition from the classroom and what inspired you to start a company, not always the first thing someone thinks about when they're in the classroom. 

Elizabeth Orme 07:55 
Definitely not. I actually laugh because as I entered the whole startup phase of the company, everyone kept asking me, well, what's your exit strategy? And I was like, I don't think I had an entrance strategy. 

Elizabeth Orme 08:07 
I didn't totally know that this is what I was going to do. I didn't know that I would end up owning an ed tech company. So yeah, I started as a special education teacher after working in research at the University of Chicago. 

Elizabeth Orme 08:19 
I worked with teacher up, watching teachers do their best work. And I knew ultimately that I wanted to work with teachers and I knew that I wanted to help them stay in the field because I saw these teachers burn out. 

Elizabeth Orme 08:35 
I saw that they wanted to do their best, but I also could see them at capacity just all the time. And so I landed in special education because quite frankly, like I was the third grader doing handstands against the wall. 

Elizabeth Orme 08:47 
I was the kid who needed the teacher to help me do things in a little bit of a different way because my brain was all over the place. And it wasn't that there was something wrong with it. It was just that it needed to find the right strategies to be really successful. 

Elizabeth Orme 09:01 
And so I went into special education because I was like, I think I can help in this area. I think I can connect with these kids. I think I can do this. I've done the research. I can write the paperwork. 

Elizabeth Orme 09:11 
I can do all these things. And wow, I was a little naive. I went in and I could not believe the workload of a special educator. It was being bombarded with paperwork while also trying to manage classrooms, while also trying to lesson plan uniquely for 24 kids. 

Elizabeth Orme 09:29 
I found myself within months being like, I don't know how people keep doing this job for years on end. I was on a natural trajectory to kind of go into the administrative side because of my data brain of living in research. 

Elizabeth Orme 09:42 
I wanted to think about systems. I wanted to think about how we could support the adults in the picture. And so I became a special education director. And I kind of thought, well, maybe the burnout feeling will go away. 

Elizabeth Orme 09:56 
And it didn't. It just shifted, right? Instead of feeling like I didn't have enough time for my students, I started feeling like I didn't have enough time for my teachers. And I'll never forget it was one IEP meeting where I was telling a family for the third time that they would have a new case manager. 

Elizabeth Orme 10:12 
And that case manager that was leaving came up to me the day before and said, I don't want to leave, but I feel like I have to. And that was really my tipping point. I took a day off of work the following week and I started creatively focused. 

Elizabeth Orme 10:24 
I thought if I could just go out and start talking to teams about how to think differently about how to support these people who want to do this job, then maybe something would come from it. And I found myself very quickly building a team and a company all around helping to retain special educators, making sure that they could feel like their job could be a career. 

James Berges 10:45 
This is amazing that you took your own experience and you said, well, how can I bring this to the other people? And you mentioned a few things that resonated there about the fragmentation at, you know, in special education. 

James Berges 10:57 
This is not unique to education, but also to healthcare. It just seems like, you know, I was a speech pathologist myself, stuff on my license, not clinically practicing, but I remember the stress of the special education teachers trying to be a quarterback and the sped director trying to be a quarterback, you know, okay, let's find you the right supports. 

James Berges 11:16 
You know, is it tier one, tier two? Do you need speech therapy? Uh, where's, when's your IEP coming up? So fractionated and fractured in the way of, of services, not only for the teachers, but for the student themselves, they're probably feeling pulled in many directions. 

James Berges 11:32 
They're being pulled out of class. So that's a whole nother way to think about it. 

Elizabeth Orme 11:36 
it as like projects, right? Like think about the amount of open projects that are constantly happening. And then, you know, you think about these school districts and these teachers, and it's not like they haven't, they don't have an assistant, they don't have a project manager telling them where all these things are at. 

Elizabeth Orme 11:52 
They're often building their own systems to track all of these open projects. And that's what I felt, right? I was in my third year of being a special ed teacher. And I was like, Oh, I think I've got it. 

Elizabeth Orme 12:03 
Like, I think I've figured this out. And we think about that in other jobs. And it's like, are they really waiting three years to finally feel like competent at their job? You know, and so I kept thinking about that as an administrator. 

Elizabeth Orme 12:15 
And then I found myself as an administrator answering those same questions over and over and over again, and thinking to myself, like, I just don't think this is how it's meant to be for people who really want to do this work and really have big impact. 

James Berges 12:29 
Hmm. Yeah. And even on your website, you talk about this kaleidoscope of services and 

Speaker 4 12:35 
Yeah. 

James Berges 12:36 
I do want to talk about, okay, so you're talking about burnout and this is a huge issue. I do want to talk about how your company solves that. Before we get there, I am curious because we have some entrepreneurial -minded people listening to this, maybe clinicians, maybe SPED teachers who are thinking like, wow, that's amazing. 

James Berges 12:53 
But how would I even create a solution? Maybe they do in services, but it sounds like you took that to the next level. Tell us just a little bit about how did you go from the idea to actually implementing that as if you made an IEP plan for yourself, but for the company. 

Elizabeth Orme 13:11 
Yeah, I love that question. I am a whiteboard thinker, so even when I'm talking, I'm like visualizing a whiteboard in front of me. My brain really works best with images versus words, right? And so what I did was while I was still a special ed director, I quite literally, and actually I have a person on my team who's our chief of staff now. 

Elizabeth Orme 13:31 
She was my first paraprofessional. So when I became a coordinator, she became a teacher. When I became a director, she became the coordinator. She and I shared an office at the time. I would go out into the building and think about things in different ways. 

Elizabeth Orme 13:45 
I would come back and I would whiteboard out, like if I had no red tape, what would this look like? And I'd start drawing what ended up being the wireframes of our technology, right? So like if only I had a system that told me this, if I knew this information, I could act faster. 

Elizabeth Orme 14:02 
If I knew this information, I could go and talk to one teacher about it instead of having to send this broad email out to the entire staff asking them to do something differently, right? I kept seeing these opportunities where the black and white could be black and white and the gray could be the moments where like we could really collaborate and solve issues together. 

Elizabeth Orme 14:23 
And that's what I kind of kept coming down to is like this framework of like, what is the black and white stuff? And I started just, I took a notebook and I started drawing out visually what I would see, what I would feel, what I would hear if those things were true. 

Elizabeth Orme 14:36 
And that ultimately became a notebook I came back to when we built the platform to say, hey, I think this is it, so. 

James Berges 14:44 
Well, yeah, yeah. And I think we get burdened by how all the bureaucratic like you have the red tape in our daily lives that it can stymie our creative thinking. So I love that you you're like, I mean, there's enough gray area in special education in general, but that's the joy of technology too is that it can it can let us do the gray area thinking the human connection part. 

James Berges 15:07 
Yeah. And I think, I think 

Elizabeth Orme 15:09 
one rule I had for myself really early on that was like my non -negotiable was I can't wait for legislation to change the amount of paperwork that people have to do, right? And I knew that like legislation was a huge part of the work in special education. 

Elizabeth Orme 15:26 
There are all the different mandates and all the different regulations you have to follow. What I also knew was that I had been around it long enough to know that if we were going to wait on that happening, we were going to lose a ton of teachers. 

Elizabeth Orme 15:37 
And so I really just want with this mentality, again, of like, we're not going to say like, we're going to wait on something to change for this to happen. We're just going to start doing what we can with what we have. 

Elizabeth Orme 15:49 
And how can we very quickly start lessening the load, start making some things easier, and really underneath it, how are we going to make it sustainable so that we're not just relying on Susie over here to hold the entire program together? 

Elizabeth Orme 16:02 
Because that is like an incredible burden. And that's what I kept hitting was just this, this feeling of like, how can I keep producing things that would just chip away at making certain things easier so that overall, we feel like we can take a breath. 

James Berges 16:16 
Yes. Collective breath because SPED teachers or educators are working, I know, 60 to 70 hours. Summer breaks aren't always enough to amend that. That's a band aid to me. 

Elizabeth Orme 16:28 
And a lot of them are working anyways, I'm sorry. Yeah. 

James Berges 16:30 
Yeah, yeah. And not to mention, yeah, unless you're in Norway, you know, and then people have side hustles. It's it's wild. So tell me then how Yeah, how does creatively focus help address that need? 

James Berges 16:42 
How do you address burnout? 

Elizabeth Orme 16:44 
Yeah. So when we think about burnout as a whole, like we'll talk specifically to education right now, but also we know like the research around burnout applies to so many fields, right? And so when we talk about burnout, we're talking about highly passionate people and passionate careers. 

Elizabeth Orme 17:00 
And I define that as like you are interfacing with humans every day. And you are a person who loves to work with humans, right? That's the work you love to do. It fills up your cup. That's why you're here. 

Elizabeth Orme 17:12 
So we're thinking about that burnout. What we know about people like that is that if they get too deep into all the paperwork, all the deadlines, and they have a task list and they're not able to engage with people as much as they'd like to, they're going to feel overloaded and burnt out. 

Elizabeth Orme 17:29 
Now, if you take another person who doesn't necessarily love interacting with a bunch of people and they love the task lists and they love all the to -dos, that fills up their bucket. But that is not true of most educators. 

Elizabeth Orme 17:40 
Most educators get into this for the kids, for the people. Administrators get into administration for the people. They want to support the teachers, right? And so when we thought about that and we thought about the different things that needed to address, we knew it needed to address three things, value, expertise, and connection. 

Elizabeth Orme 17:58 
Because the research has told us for two decades that that is why people leave the field. They don't feel valued, they don't feel like an expert, and they don't feel connected. Yes, there's pay. I think it's number five. 

Elizabeth Orme 18:11 
But it continues to just be the same things that surface. When you really ask people who are satisfied with the jobs, what their environment looks like, sounds like, and feels like, it has those things surfacing. 

Elizabeth Orme 18:23 
They feel valued in the work that they do. People understand their role. They are treated like experts and they're provided opportunities to become an expert. They are connected to the people around them and not isolated in their work. 

Elizabeth Orme 18:35 
And so when we built Access3, Access is actually the second part of your cervical spine. It connects your heart to your brain. And so we talk about the heart work and the brain work that goes into being an educator. 

Elizabeth Orme 18:45 
And 3 is value, expertise, and connection. And so as we built out the platform, we had to do some really technical things that we know put a burden on educators and administrators. It's things like, do I know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. 

Elizabeth Orme 19:05 
So with all these different tools, we have professional development platforms. We have student management systems. We have all of these different things to go into. We go to this place to find lessons. 

Elizabeth Orme 19:14 
We Google all the time and we spend so much time Googling everything. Our whole goal with Access3 was we want people to wander less, search less, and worry less. If they could do those things less, they're going to feel a whole lot better about the work that they're doing. 

Elizabeth Orme 19:30 
And so in Access3, it does things like it tells you, what do you need to work on next? All those open projects that you have surrounding the IEPs that you have, evaluations that you have, the parts that you're responsible for. 

Elizabeth Orme 19:42 
Instead of searching through your email for in the strand of 72 emails to find out exactly what part the school psych needs you to do, Access3 just tells you what it is. Better yet, if you don't know how to do that part, because you were trained six months ago and you haven't had to do it yet, it teaches you right in the moment how to do it. 

Elizabeth Orme 19:58 
So it's providing you that kind of day -to -day flow to know that you have tiny pockets of time, you have things that you have to prioritize, and you will always have things that you are unsure of exactly how to do it, especially when your district tells you to do it a new way. 

Elizabeth Orme 20:13 
So it truly is that feeling of, I know what to do, I know when to do it, and I know how to do it. And from an administrative standpoint, they have a pulse. They're clear that people understand what their roles and responsibilities are. 

Elizabeth Orme 20:26 
They're clear who they can provide more support to because they can see what the workload truly looks like for people. And they can really push in to provide that customized and differentiated learning that their adults need in the picture versus just their students. 

James Berges 20:40 
Hmm. Yeah, it's like serve serve the educators who serve the students and it will all work itself out 

Elizabeth Orme 20:46 
Yes. And that's the number one factor in student success, right? Happy teacher, healthy teacher, teacher who feels valued like an expert and connected. They are going to drive the greatest student outcomes. 

Elizabeth Orme 20:56 
The research has told us that, but our action doesn't always align to what the research is telling. Our action is always, you know, being put on another person who's already burned out. Like principals get to know your special ed team better. 

Elizabeth Orme 21:08 
Principles support your special ed team better. Well, I was licensed as a principal. I had one three -hour course on special education. So can we really expect principals to like push in and do all that work when they're tasked with all the other things? 

Elizabeth Orme 21:20 
No. We need something different for special educators because their job is unique and the needs of these students are unique and their jobs change just like any other job. And so we have to really catch up from that like learning and development perspective of like, how are we supporting the adult learners? 

Speaker 4 21:36 
Yeah, are you looking to go beyond your degree? 

James Berges 21:40 
and expand your impact? Whether you're a clinician or educator, you can leverage your skills outside direct services. Maybe you want to break into the exciting world of health and ed tech, or maybe you're interested in carving your own path and digital entrepreneurship. 

James Berges 21:52 
Either way, you'll find a supportive community and resources at slptransitions .com. Inside, you'll find my personal tips for mastering your mindset in the face of transition, trust me, I've been there, and inspiring stories of people who've made the leap. 

James Berges 22:07 
You'd be surprised how much your experience translates to other fields. To find out how, join other movers and shakers at slptransitions .com. Now, let's get back to the amazing interview. Hey, I'm just having flashbacks to being in SPED as a speech therapist, and we used a sauna, I think, to do some task management, which is, if people don't know, it's just like a general business project management tool. 

James Berges 22:34 
And, you know, you're basically shoehorning in different tools to try to fit this use case, but it doesn't quite work. And then, you know, like you said, emailing back and forth, or there's these horribly outdated, monolith giant gargantuan systems that haven't really updated the user interface in 20 years, where you're actually putting the IEP. 

James Berges 22:56 
So I would like download random softwares and try them for whatever, 20, 30 bucks a month. And then like, just for taking notes, just so my notes were a little bit cleaner. Like it literally was like a notepad that I was using because doing it in the other platform was so burdensome. 

James Berges 23:13 
And so, yeah, I wish I had something that could streamline all of these. 

Elizabeth Orme 23:17 
Yeah, right. It's like we get the, to your point, like there are a ton of tools out there right now. And I think most people are searching for the thing that's going to kind of save them. Right? Like I had one, I was walking through one of our districts and a teacher picked up her laptop and showed me the post -it note underneath her laptop that had her checklist of things that she has to do in a certain circumstance. 

Elizabeth Orme 23:38 
And all I could think was like, Oh my gosh, but what happens when that person's gone or someone comes and fills that role? Or like, are they going to know to look under the laptop for the post -it that tells them exactly what to do? 

Elizabeth Orme 23:49 
Right? And I just think about how that actually feels and you're kind of constantly in survival mode, right? You're trying to find a new thing to solve a problem for you. And ultimately it is managing the work and in your own special education, we talk about executive functioning. 

Elizabeth Orme 24:06 
Well, executive function skills in adults is just as true as it is in kids. We have our strengths and we have our weaknesses and we have our areas that, you know, really support us and other areas that we have to find strategies in. 

Elizabeth Orme 24:17 
And so the whole goal with access three is the system for them is let's not have you jumping between so many systems, trying to figure it all out. Let's utilize one that your district also uses so that you do know what's going on when you need to have it done by when you don't know how to do something. 

Elizabeth Orme 24:35 
You don't have to feel, I'll just say like, you don't have to feel stupid for asking the question for the fifth time. None of us want to feel stupid in our jobs, right? And so how do we create that kind of space, even if it is through a technology where you feel supported as the human learner that you are? 

James Berges 24:51 
Yeah, I love that. And you've expanded now to over 100 schools, which was congratulations. That's an amazing milestone. Thank you. And I know before this, we started recording, you mentioned sort of started off as a service -based, so like a very tailored service offering. 

James Berges 25:07 
Do you think that helped, like looking back that you needed to go through that one -to -one? I imagine you were talking to teachers, collecting feedback. That's just amazing. I guess what have been some of the toughest challenges in getting from there to where you are now and scaling it? 

Elizabeth Orme 25:27 
Yeah. I mean, listen, if you talk to people outside of just even ed tech, just in tech as a whole, anyone will tell you that the success rate of companies that move from service to product versus product to service is wildly low. 

Elizabeth Orme 25:42 
And I felt it. It was extremely hard. We grew as a services company. It quite literally started as me saying like, you have a math coach, you have a reading coach, you should have a special ed coach. 

Elizabeth Orme 25:53 
And it was me providing direct services and then me building a team to be able to do just that in Minnesota only. What I knew and what we learned very quickly was like the problems we were addressing and the challenges that educators were facing was all the same, no matter where we were, no matter what state we talked to. 

Elizabeth Orme 26:10 
Honestly, you could expand it now and say globally, you have a lot of the same problems. When we built the technology, we had some districts that we were working with that weren't ready for it. They weren't ready for something that had never been used before. 

Elizabeth Orme 26:24 
We are still hitting the point where districts will look at what we're doing and literally say to us, well, that's never existed. What is this? And that's our biggest obstacle. It's kind of like that feeling of this was the way you used to do it. 

Elizabeth Orme 26:39 
This is a new way to do it. And what do we know changes really hard. 

James Berges 26:44 
Try to explain a car to people who only ride horses and they're like, okay, yeah, you're crazy. You don't want to always be so far ahead of the curve and then you have to educate. 

Elizabeth Orme 26:56 
Yeah, and as a company, you know, like, what are things that worked and didn't work, I would say for a while, only talking about the way it should be didn't work for us. And so services really did help us to start learning more, we could rely on the data more. 

Elizabeth Orme 27:11 
What really excites me is that we have so much data about what are the questions that are being asked at what time of the year, but by what type of teacher, right? So that tells you about where we can head when it comes to AI and different things that can really support people in unique roles, like speech pathologists, for example. 

Elizabeth Orme 27:28 
And you know, there's a difference between a clinical speech pathologist and a school's speech pathologist. And there's a difference between working with early childhood kids and transition age kids, right? 

Elizabeth Orme 27:39 
And so the more customized we can get, and the more we can know about the individual types of roles that we're serving and supporting the better. So from a challenge, launching technology, and again, like helping people understand there is a new way you can be doing this, and your job can feel easier. 

Elizabeth Orme 27:59 
And people don't always really believe that. And so our biggest hurdle right now is helping people believe in the fact that there is something that can help them make their jobs feel more sustainable, and really just not necessarily easier doing less, but doing more of what they love to do and less of what they don't love to do. 

James Berges 28:17 
Absolutely. And now you've, congratulations, you've secured three million in seed funding since I've read maybe more. I'm not sure. Yeah, that's amazing. And that's a huge milestone. Tell me about what are some things you want to use that money for to expand the platform? 

James Berges 28:35 
Like what are the needs that maybe you couldn't address before? 

Elizabeth Orme 28:39 
Absolutely. A lot of our funding came into play to really look at, okay, we have an opportunity here in front of us. Again, that problem that I surfaced earlier, which was people just don't know about us. 

Elizabeth Orme 28:50 
We were a Minnesota -based company, a services business. We had to completely rebrand ourselves in the state of Minnesota. We still have people reaching out thinking we're that company that we were. But when we went national with the platform, we really had to do a lot of work around how do we talk about this thing that people haven't experienced before? 

Elizabeth Orme 29:08 
How do we get in front of different crowds of people, different administrators? How do we help better really learn about superintendents and what their role is in special education and how they can support their special education teams? 

Elizabeth Orme 29:21 
We talk about it as how can you as a superintendent or district administrator be a champion for your special education team? When we talk about the funding piece, it was a really exciting moment for us. 

Elizabeth Orme 29:33 
It's a phase in startup where you really get your product market fit. You understand what's working. You get to start telling the stories and the success stories of the results you've had in working with the districts. 

Elizabeth Orme 29:44 
That's what's really allowed us to get to more districts. We were really lucky to be ready for all 50, like all the states all at once. We said we can go anywhere as of today. That was, again, unique to Special Ed because we kept getting the like, well, in our state, that's different. 

Elizabeth Orme 30:00 
We're like, we know. We're ready for that. Our technology is ready for that. Our team is ready for that. We've been able to put a lot of resources into that in terms of technology. Most recently, though, we were able to launch a feature within our platform when I talked about that workflow piece. 

Elizabeth Orme 30:18 
It's like any IEP meeting you have coming up, evaluation meeting you have coming up. You could talk about alternative dispute resolution. You could talk about complaints that are coming in from the state. 

Elizabeth Orme 30:28 
You could talk about interventions that are happening for kids, anything tied to a student. We can actually create that custom timeline that's unique to the district. It meets all the state requirements. 

Elizabeth Orme 30:38 
It meets all of the district requirements, and it embeds all of their learning into that timeline. Quite literally, the system can work as a handbook for how to do your job. If you have a person that was a para yesterday and a teacher today, which is absolutely true in many places, that person can get not just trained, but provided a tool that will provide continuous training and onboarding instead of a single three -hour session where they're expected to digest and learn everything all at once. 

James Berges 31:08 
Right. Here's your random handbook and like, good luck. 

Elizabeth Orme 31:12 
And nobody's gonna look through, I hate to say, but I say it, I'm like, guess what? Nobody's gonna look through that binder. I'm not gonna look through the binder. As a director and special ed, I was like, I know I need to use this binder, but I'm probably not going to. 

Elizabeth Orme 31:24 
Nobody has the time to find the page of the one thing they're looking for. We need to make that faster for them. We need to feel like I can log into a thing and ask a question and I'm going to get an answer. 

Elizabeth Orme 31:35 
So with that, we provide that on -demand feeling of I can get my questions answered without peeking my head in the hallway and hoping I see someone that can answer my question or emailing and hoping I hear back in three days. 

James Berges 31:47 
Yeah. So this is a completely tailored, amazing solution. And I'm just thinking even with AI now, which you didn't start with that in mind because it wasn't really taking off as it is now. We're just at the beginning. 

James Berges 32:00 
But I would even have conversations with chat GPT, and you can build your own GPT sometimes. It just takes a lot of hacking around to build a knowledge base. But it sounds like that's one great use case for AI now. 

James Berges 32:16 
And these so is there like a within creatively focused or access three, there's almost a chat bot interface? Or how do people get their questions answered? And or is there you mentioned feeling connected is a big part of keeping people not burnt out is our community aspect because I imagine there'd be more and more people on the platform. 

James Berges 32:37 
You have this almost network effect where you have people collaborating and sharing ideas together. 

Elizabeth Orme 32:44 
like ear to ear smiling, because actually, when I told you earlier about the notebook that I would write, I draw the pictures. One of my first pictures was a map of the United States, and had stars in multiple places and all the lines connecting them. 

Elizabeth Orme 32:56 
And that was a symbol for me of like, even the teacher who's teaching in a federal three EBD, third through fifth grade setting, right, like they would have people they would know that they were not alone in their job, whether they were in Illinois or California, and they would be able to be connected. 

Elizabeth Orme 33:15 
So access three has a feature to be able to essentially match make people that have a day that look like theirs. And because of that, we're able to prompt them with some questions that we know are relevant to them. 

Elizabeth Orme 33:24 
So for example, a teacher who works in a behavior needs area, the first week of March is going to get a question about a lopeman, because we know that's when the kids start running, like, we know that's going to happen, we know we're going to get asked that question. 

Elizabeth Orme 33:36 
So instead of a new teacher sitting there wondering, like, what is going on, we're pushing them that question. And they're able to actually answer those questions with people around them that have a similar day to theirs. 

Elizabeth Orme 33:46 
Same kind of thing, like, you don't want to pick up the phone at the end of the day and try to explain your job to someone, you just want to know that people understand that you want to know that people get what your work is like. 

Elizabeth Orme 33:56 
And so to be connected with those people is really meaningful. To your point earlier, though, about like, how do they get that on demand feel? I was ready to say like, yes, yes, yes, and yes. Because again, here's what we know, not everybody wants to learn in the same way. 

Elizabeth Orme 34:09 
Some people want to pick up a phone, some people want to go on to a zoom and interface one to one with a coach or with somebody they can talk to. Some people want to use a chatbot, some people want to search for the resource. 

Elizabeth Orme 34:20 
And so our system really provides all of those opportunities for the way that they learn best, even to the point of providing accessibility features that helps them focus on key areas. It really allows for them to learn and engage in the material they need to understand in the way that works best for them. 

James Berges 34:38 
I love it. It's sort of ironic that as the laws take so long to change or sometimes policies are so complex that it just adds more stress and cognitive load for our students and our teachers and our educators. 

James Berges 34:52 
We can't wait and we need technology to come fill that gap and that's amazing that you can tailor it towards different states and different policies and everyone has their own workload as an individual, as their students. 

Elizabeth Orme 35:06 
Yeah, I call it like taking out all the fluff. Let's take out all the fluff, all the things you don't need to think about, right? Reduce the cognitive load. Let's get to the work we need to get done. 

Elizabeth Orme 35:14 
It might not go away. You might still have to do this part of the paperwork, but let's make it as straightforward as we possibly can for you so that you can get back to your students faster. 

James Berges 35:22 
Okay, well, I love this and I want to hit you with almost like a billboard question, but if you have the attention of policymakers and school administrators, you have a microphone for the whole, all administrators, what would be your message about supporting special education? 

Elizabeth Orme 35:42 
We will always need these people. You've got to support the adults. If you don't support the adults, you are right now making the decision to negatively impact your students. 

James Berges 35:51 
Hmm 

Elizabeth Orme 35:52 
We'll always need them. I don't care what technology comes out. I don't care what AI can do for you. You are going to need people caring about people. And these people want to do the work. So let's make it easier for them to do the job. 

James Berges 36:02 
bada -bing bada -boom. Yes. Thank you. Make it easier. Don't make it harder. Yeah. Let the humans do what the humans do best. I was always, yes. Okay. Well, I think that's a good place to, to wrap up, but if people want to find you and follow you, I'm sure there's special education teachers listening to her like, yeah, that sounds great. 

James Berges 36:23 
I don't want to be burnt out. Yeah. 

Elizabeth Orme 36:27 
First of all, if you're a teacher, definitely get in touch with us. You can go to www .creativelyfocused .net. There's a contact form on there. I don't care what role you play in the district. If you're a para, if you're a teacher, if you're an administrator, go ahead and fill that out. 

Elizabeth Orme 36:41 
We will work with you to figure out who we need to talk to. Let's get you some support and let's figure it out. So head to our website. We can also follow us on social media at creatively .focused, and those are great ways to get in touch with us. 

James Berges 36:55 
Amazing. I'll put those in the show notes and yeah, everyone check that out, creatively focused. And I'm looking forward to following your journey, Elizabeth. See what happens in the next few years as technology just gets crazier and crazier. 

James Berges 37:08 
Hopefully we can make the lives of educators less crazy. So I appreciate all the work you're doing. Thanks for coming on. 

Elizabeth Orme 37:15 
Thank you so much. Thank you for your time today. This was really great. Love to talk about it anytime. Thanks. 

Mai Ling Chan 37:20 
We hope you enjoyed this episode and invite you to leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and share the show with people you think will find value from it. This helps the show a lot. Or have a great guest referral, reach out to us at xleaders at gmail .com. 

Speaker 4 37:36 
And if you want exclusive tips on becoming an exceptional leader, deliver straight to your inbox, just go to ExceptionalLeaders .com and sign up for our mailing list. Thanks for listening.